| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Throughout Aberystwyth, schoolboys are vanishing without trace, and Louie Knight, the town's only private investigator, becomes involved when he has a visit from the exotic singer Myfanwy Montez (love the name!). She is the star of Wales' most outrageous nightclub, and is keen for Louie to track down her missing cousin, known as Evans the Boot. Aided by such eccentrics as philosopher-cum-ice-cream seller Sospan, Louie finds himself encountering a plot quite as labyrinthine as any which exercised Philip Marlowe. Surely Lovespoon, Grand Wizard of the Druids and the town's most powerful citizen, had a hand in the disappearances?
Nothing is quite as it seems in Pryce's outrageous and irreverent tale, which functions as a canny thriller as much as a wry parody. A good deal of the humour comes from relocating Chandler's sun-baked California locales to a parochial Welsh town, and all the clichés are ruthlessly exploded: Louie is visited in his seedy office by his sultry female client in time-honoured fashion. But it's the language, which leaps off the page, that really marks Pryce out as a stylist of no mean skill, and his bizarre refraction of Marlowe-speak is a real delight:
By the time I reached the whelk stall the drizzle had finally made up its mind and turned into rain, driving forward hard off the sea and into my face. The booth was quiet: no-one there except a kid in charge--a pimply adolescent in a grubby white coat and a silly cardboard hat. I ordered the special and waited, as the youth kept a wary eye on me; trouble was never far away at this time of night.. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Arena, Graham Grant
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
The language and imagery is great (in how many books can you find corsetry or a tea cosy as clues in solving the mystery), but yet I don't think it quite matches Jasper Fforde. However anyone who likes original quirky books such as Fforde or Pratchett will enjoy this.
OK, coming from Mid Wales and knowing all the places helps, but even if you didn't this would be just such an enjoyable read. It combines at least three levels of brilliance: it is a breath-takingly funny spoof on Chandler, or maybe even on Mickey Spillane - it gets pleasantly trashy in places. It is also a spoof on Welsh culture, and the wealth of in-jokes there is amazing. Secondly, its very surreal and black comedy cloak a plot which, dammit, is actually quite exciting - I wanted to know whodunnit! And thirdly, there are moments of real tenderness and insight into the deeper aspects of human emotions - love, sex, war, guilt. Oh, and best of all, a totally accurate and identifiable-with perspective on bastard P.E. teachers, may they all rot in hell.
I completely loved it, and read it in just two sittings. A truly remarkable first novel.
The first in the Louie Knight series set in a surreal film-noir imagining of 1980s Aberystwyth is a tale of danger,... Read more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
